Prescribing medications to patients is often a complex practice for clinicians, with patients often visiting multiple prescribing clinicians and a continuously increasing number of available medications. The growing complexity of prescribing medications has given rise to an increased risk of medication errors. For example, without proper information, a clinician may prescribe a medication having an adverse interaction with a medication prescribed by another clinician. In addition, a clinician may inadvertently duplicate a medication already prescribed by another clinician.
Accordingly, information detailing what medications a patient is currently taking or has taken in the past may be invaluable to a clinician treating the patient. Such medication information may be available via a patient's medication profile or a medical record, such as a community health record, electronic medical record, or personal health record, for example. Unfortunately, in many circumstances, information detailing a patient's current medications and/or medication history may not be readily available to the clinician treating the patient. For example, in some cases, a medication profile or medical record may not be available for the patient. In other cases in which a medication profile or medical record is available, the profile or record may either provide incomplete medication information or completely fail to provide any medication information at all. In such instances, a clinician may question a patient regarding current and past medications. However, the patient may not know details regarding his/her medications or may provide inaccurate information.
One potential source of medication information for patients may be medical claims data. Payers involved in the business side of healthcare, including insurance companies, claims processing companies, and the like, all have the potential to produce medical claims data as part of their normal business operation. This claims data may be for any of a variety of healthcare-related services, including medications. Typically, a payer may have medication claims data representing years worth of medication utilization information that is tied to each patient. However, there is currently no convenient solution for clinicians to access medication claims information for patients and use the information to populate and/or replenish a medications profile or medical record for each patient.